Customer Reviews

Sunset Park: A Novel

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1 star:		(5)

 

 

Reading a Paul Auster novel is something like listening to a well-orchestrated , multi-layered musical composition where certain melodies and motifs recur with substantial elaboration and variation. He is one of our very best writers and his newest, Sunset Park, like many of his books, reflects back to us a great deal about how we live today. It is "up-to-the-moment" current, the protagonist, Miles Heller, being employed by a South Florida realty company (for part of the novel) as a "trash-out" worker who cleans out repossessed homes that are usually left in awful shape by their former inhabitants. Miles has a somewhat fetishistic compulsion to photograph the forgotten possessions, the abandoned things that have been left behind, and his large collection of digital photos of these objects comprise one of the many lists of contemporary artifacts that Auster constructs throughout the book. It includes pictures of "books, shoes, and oil paintings, pianos and toasters, dolls, tea sets and dirty socks, televisions and board games, party dresses and tennis racquets, sofas, silk lingerie, caulking guns, thumbtacks, plastic action figures, tubes of lipstick, rifles, discolored mattresses, knives and forks, poker chips, a stamp collection, and a dead canary lying at the bottom of its cage."

Miles is 28 years old, and one day while sitting on the grass in a public park, reading The Great Gatsby (one of many iconic American cultural landmarks referenced in the book) he meets Pilar Sanchez, who happens to be reading the same novel. That bond connects them immediately, but there's one hitch to that connection. Pilar, though lovely, smart, and irresistible, is seventeen years old. That doesn't slow down Miles at all; he falls deeply in love with her. Both have experienced deep tragedies in their lives; Miles' older brother Bobby was accidently killed by a car when Miles shoved him into the road while the two were walking together. Pilar's parents were both killed in an auto accident as well. She lives with her three sisters, one of whom tries to blackmail Miles into giving her some of the merchandise he gathers from repossessed houses. She threatens to call the police and tell them he is committing statutory rape with her sister regularly.

The plot, as they say, thickens. Miles returns to the Sunset Park in Brooklyn where he lived some time ago before becoming estranged from his father and stepmother. Because he is without a regular job and intends to return to Florida after Pilar turns eighteen, he moves in with some friends who are "squatting" in a condemned building in the area: Bing Nathan, Alice Bergstrom, Ellen Brice and Jake Baum, and the remainder of the book is about the intersecting relationships between these five people, as well as Miles' lingering resentments regarding his parents and stepmother. You will notice virtually all the characters have names that evoke various American figures, both fictional and real. And in addition, additional American motifs that touch down again and again in the book include Miles' fascination with baseball lore, particularly Herb Score, the Cleveland Indian left hander whose career was shattered with Yankee shortsop Gil MacDougald hit a line drive that shattered multiple bones in his face, and Mark "the Bird" Fydrich, the Detroit Tiger 1976 Rookie of the Year pitcher who became famous for his virtually perpetual motion on the mound.

Then there are continuing references to a classic American film of the late 40s, The Best Years of our Lives, because one of Miles' housemates, Alice, is writing a PhD dissertation on the film. The film's ironic title and many of its remarkably delineated details, resonates as Miles and his friends struggle to live the "best years of their lives" in what are the worst years of the life of their country, As another great novelist wrote in another great tale of two cities, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." While the novel's ending seems hurried and somewhat inconclusive, you can chalk up another brilliant performance by Auster and you will not want to miss this book.

I have read nearly every book by Auster since I first read The New York Trilogy in the 90s. Sunset Park has a different intent, being less experimental, and shouldn't be judged in the same category. It is a straight forward narrative written from the point of view of four misfits trying to find themselves while squatting in an abandoned house in New York City. Which sounds intriguing but Auster ultimately gives us nothing we couldn't easily foresee. The ultimate resolution of the fratricidal disaster described in the first few chapters resolves itself without surprises.

There are more sexual insights into the characters than in previous Auster novels. If such details elaborated and defined the narrative I could see his point for including them. But in this case it adds a seedy undertone that makes the reader feel more a party to gossip than a participant in an illuminating narrative. At one point a character who is a publisher toys briefly with the idea of publishing an artist's raunchy portfolio as a ploy to attract readers. I couldn't help wondering if Auster succumbed to the same subterfuge. Auster is a great writer. His work doesn't need such artless stimulants to boost sales.

On the plus side Auster gives brief but interesting views into the publishing world, the motivations of PEN and their work for Liu Xiaobo, as well as insights into the writer's life. Conversely he writes engagingly about baseball. It is these unconventional contrasts I enjoy most about Auster's work. The writing, as always, is excellent and despite its flaws is an effortless read.

Paul Auster is one of my favorite writers; he always able to paint his characters with taut, finely detailed, yet propulsive brush strokes. And in Sunset Park, he does not disappoint.

This novel is less postmodern than his recent book Invisible. It focuses on debris: physical debris from trashed-out foreclosed homes in Florida that Miles Heller, a Brown University dropout, rescues through his camera lens. And mental debris that Miles wrestles with after a spontaneous action on his part results in an accidental death, causing him to flee from his New York family and live in self-imposed exile down south. A chance encounter with a high school student, Cuban-American Pilar Sanchez, while reading The Great Gatsby brings fleeting connection into his life for a few happy months. But Pilar is underage and he is soon forced to flee north to avoid family charges that could lead to jail time.

As a result of his return northbound trek, Miles moves in with the other characters that populate this book: four flat-broke twentysomethings who are struggling with issues of personal identity and past failures. Together, they illegally squat in an abandoned house in Brooklyn's Sunset Park, openly evading the government and awaiting the day when eviction will become a reality. Each has placed his or her life on hold while forestalling a crucial decision. In Miles case, he is awaiting the right time connect again with his father Morris, an independent publisher who is fighting the dissolution of both his business and marriage and has never quite given up that his son will eventually find his way back home.

The fractured narrative, told sequentially in the third-person POV, weaves together a number of elements: the economic recession and ensuring foreclosure crisis, baseball trivia including Jack Lohrke ("Lucky") who cheated death repeatedly until the very end, William Wyler's 1946 coming-home classic The Best Years of Our Lives, the demise of the literary publishing houses, To Kill A Mockingbird, and the Hospital of Broken Things, which repairs artifacts of a world that once was. This seemingly haphazard assortment is not quite so haphazard on second glance: all are centered on one's ability to out-cheat fate and assume control of one's own destiny...or not. The themes that Auster has explored in the past - chance encounters, tragic flaws and past events, art and solitude, a rebellion and penance - are all here again.

James Wood, the esteemed New Yorker critic, called Auster's prose "comfortingly artificial." With the exception of a few passages that I found to be inorganically graphic, I don't agree. As these disparate elements come together at the end; the power took my breath away in ways that no artificial construct ever could.

In essence, Auster is asking: "Is luck random or is it within our control? How much responsibility can we take for occurrences? What does self-forgiveness entail? Is it worth hoping for a future when there may be no future? Should we live for the passing moment or take a bigger picture into consideration? These questions - perfectly posed for today's tough economic times and daunting crises -- will have you ruminating long after you read the last pages.

I don't like writing reviews. I tend to avoid in depth discussion of plot, character development and style; I most likely review only a small percentage of what I read. There are other reviewers here, like Jill Shtulman, who more than competently do what a reviewer "should" do. So I'll just do what I do:

I have read several of Auster's novels. I'm always surprised, sometimes enchanted, occasionally engrossed, and often captivated, and my opinions are not always shared by other readers. I loved "The Brooklyn Follies", for instance, and its characters stayed with me for quite a while. I don't expect extreme artistry, contrived plot or brilliant and innovative style from a good writer e v e r y s i n g l e t i m e.
What I expect is a good story. "The Brooklyn Follies" was one.

"Sunset Park", truthfully, almost lost me in the first 50 pages. Had it been anyone other than Auster, I might have set the book aside; but I've come to expect something from him that I've learned one can't expect from most writers, so I kept reading. In fact, I read the entire book in one day. As I read, it began to feel like a journey. Imagine that you are in a comfortable vehicle with an unknown destination; the driver is a mature man who's well traveled, educated, erudite and, more importantly, emotionally aware and accessible. During this journey, he's in control of the destination, you are merely a passenger, and he begins to tell you a story. There are points in the narrative that bring you wide awake; there are others that are annoying, tidbits of information you don't need and don't want; there are eye opening moments, great regret in places, the sharing of an entire lifetime can't always be entertaining but it *should* be recognizable. To you, personally and deeply. Especially if you've also lived a lifetime. And this is all of those things.

At the end of the journey, as you step away from your narrator and his vehicle, you know you've glimpsed something about him, something he's generously shared in the guise of his tale. There were moments that I talked back to this narrator, even looked at his photograph on the back flap of the book, that's how real he became for me as he told me his story. I await the next one. Hurry up.

Brief summary and review. No spoilers.

This story is told from the point of view of several characters, who narrate different chapters.

We start out with Miles Heller, and he is the character that ties everyone else together. He is in his late twenties and is living in Florida. He works for a company that cleans out abandoned houses, and Miles seems to feel an affinity for things left behind - those items that were abandoned by their owners. Miles is in love with a 17 year Cuban girl who shares his love of literature and learning. He has mislead her about his past, and she believes that his parents are dead. In truth they are alive and well. We learn right away that Miles young stepbrother Bobby was run over by a car and killed when the boys were teenagers, and that Miles feels he was responsible.

When Miles becomes concerned about getting arrested for being with an underage girl, he decides to move back to New York to live with his only longtime friend, Bing Nathan. Miles has essentially run away from his family and from his past, and when he decides to move into an abandoned house with Bing and his two roommates, Alice and Ellen, he must finally deal with that past.

The other narrators include Bing, Alice, Ellen, and Miles' father Morris, who runs a struggling publishing house. We also hear from Miles' mother Mary-Lee, a famous actress who left Miles and his father when Miles was just a few months old.

What makes this book so remarkable to me is the exquisite writing - I have dog-earred so many pages in the book for reread that it's double its size. Auster manages to get into the heads of characters disparate in age and temperament, and they all sprang to life for me. It's also obvious this author cares a lot about these characters, and that makes us care too.

Standout moments for me were the descriptions and reflections about aging and reminiscence. There were so many profound observations about life in this novel, and I think every reader - no matter what the age- will find moments that ring so true and perfect. This was a real reading high for me, and I am so glad that I read this book.

Also of interest - there is quite a bit of discussion about baseball. I am a big baseball fan so all the baseball talk was a lot of fun to me. And the way these stories give us insights about life and into the hearts of these characters is masterful.

Highly recommended. I guarantee you there will be passages that you'll want to read aloud to someone else, and pages that you'll dog-ear to reread for your own enjoyment once again.

(edit - I wanted to add that as much as I loved this novel, I wasn't quite as enamored with the ending. It was not as memorable as the rest of the story. However, I still highly recommend this book, and it will still on on my best of the year list.)

Count me in as a long-time follower of Paul Auster's work, even if somewhat browned off (being polite here) by the post-modern jiggery-pokery of 'Travels in the Scriptorium' and 'Man in the Dark'. Disappointing therefore, to find little in Auster's latest novel 'Sunset Park' that would signal the return to form for Auster that someone like myself (who regarded Auster as a favourite author) would love to see. Part of the 'old' Auster appeal for me is that there's no guessing where a Paul Auster novel will take you. You may start off in New York as happens in 'Moon Palace', my favourite Auster novel to-date, and incredibly, find yourself transported in the blink of an eye to the American West. Another novel, 'Mr. Vertigo', whisks you off on a magical tour across the USA. You never knew where you would end up with Auster. Count me in for more of that 'old' Auster of his younger days.

In 'Sunset Park', Auster offers insights into writing and publishing and makes some pertinent comments on the state of present-day America and its ongoing overseas misadventures ("a sick destructive monster") but count me out of all the trivia on baseball and the arty stuff on the film 'The Best Years of Our Lives'. Ditto for all the bits on erotic drawings; and Auster's stylistic touch of using lists and then more lists is another annoyance (IMO).

The intriguing situation presented in 'Sunset Park' involving the occupation of an abandoned house in New York City by four twenty-something squatters Miles, Bing, Alice and Ellen - each in turn taking their place on centre stage as Auster switches the focus of the narrative from one to the other, relating the story through their eyes - looks promising, creates anticipation of.... struggle?... strife?... confrontation perhaps? - a situation that begs the kind of imaginative treatment at which Auster has excelled in earlier novels such as 'The Music of Chance'. Given the set-up, I had hoped a story with 'fire in its belly' would ignite from the squatters' illegal occupation. Yet Auster makes little of the dramatic potential of the situation and the disappointing end result (IMO) is a busload of pedestrian characters plodding through a lacklustre plot where nothing much happens that isn't expected, where there's no real drama in the interaction of the four squatters sufficient to yoke this reader's attention to the narrative. I soldiered on manfully to the end but in the end found myself starting to gloss over pages as my interest in the proceedings waned. No, not one of the 'select few' Auster novels I would run through smoke to save from a fire. On this one count me out!

His last several novels were self indulgent twaddle.Not Sunset Park. He has never been better than here at exploring the interior lives of characters, from the guilt ridden Miles to his aging father Morris("Straddling the border between inevitable extinction and the possibility of continued life.") to Ellen Brice, a housemate of Miles("...she is so starved for physical contact that she can barely think about anything else now. She masturbates in her bed every night, but masturbation isn't a solution, it offers only temporary relief, it's like an aspirin you take to kill the pain of a throbbing tooth, and she doesn't know how much longer she can go on without being kissed, without being loved.")While the ending seems abrupt, it is not, and teases out the theme of this beautiful work, that "the dark time will soon be over, and all will be forgiven."

This is a brief review of the 7 CD set of SUNSET PARK, which is read by the author, and runs for 8.5 hours.

Paul Auster does a good job of reading his novel (which might be expected to be the case), placing emphasis and emotion right where it should be.

The story itself centers around a group of squatters, all victims of the 2008 economic crunch, who are gathered in a rundown house in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

Each character has their own trials to deal with, and as I listened, I found myself hoping they would all survive and thrive in their post-financial crisis lives.

To find out if they did, you'll have to listen yourself (no spoilers here), but I think you'll find their stories interesting, and the outcome of the tale satisfying.

Previously I had only read Auster's "Book of Illusions" and didn't really care for it. But since this was free, I decided to give it a try. For some reason I can't explain, I really liked the book and when I wasn't reading it, I wanted to be.

My best guess is because the focal character Miles Heller is near 30, a baseball fan, and had an annoying brother. So we have some things in common there. That usually helps to like someone, as various scientific studies have pointed out. (Other studies probably say the opposite, but that's neither here nor there.)

When the book begins, Miles is living in Florida. It's 2008, in the middle of housing bubble collapse and Wall Street collapse. Miles works cleaning out houses of those who have been evicted from their homes. The love Miles's life is a Cuban girl named Pilar, who is only 17, 11 years his junior. Miles plans on marrying her once she turns eighteen. Then Pilar's sister gets involved and Miles has to flee. Unlike Humbert Humbert, he doesn't take his Lolita with him.

Instead, he goes alone to New York. Specifically to Brooklyn and a house in the neighborhood known as Sunset Park. A college chum and two of his friends are living there already, rent-free because the house belongs to the city after its former residents were evicted. (Irony, anyone?) So Miles and the others squat there for a few months, waiting for the police to lower the boom on them.

As much as I really wanted to like this book and give it five stars, I can't overlook the fatal flaw. There are too many characters and too many things going on. There are the four housemates, Miles's parents, and his stepparents, all of whom except Miles's stepparents get a turn at narrating. With so much going on in a book that comes in at less than 350 pages, there just isn't time for Auster to deal with everything. So it comes off as shallow, the characters, situations, and conversations as sketches instead of fully-formed.

While I enjoyed Auster's writing, I think the story would have been vastly improved if he had just picked one or maybe two narrators (like Miles and his father) and focused on them. That or make the book about 300 pages longer. Because as it stands, while the housemates Bing, Alice, and Ellen are interesting, their potential is squandered. Just as squandered are the interactions between the housemates during the squatting in Sunset Park. Really you get more drama from an episode of "The Real World" or "Jersey Shore" or any "reality" show where people are cooped up together than you get from these four.

So in the end it's a good book and I really liked it, but it could have been a lot more. While I liked it more than "The Book of Illusions" I doubt it's his best effort.

That is all.

Set primarily in the Sunset Park community of Brooklyn following the financial crash of 2008, Paul Auster's novel "Sunset Park" combines elements of literary bohemia with reminders of "The Diary of Anne Frank". The book features four young people in their 20s who stryggle with themselves, with their artistic or literary ambitions, and with poverty. They find themselves squatting in a ramshackle abandoned small house in Brooklyn which New York City has seized for back taxes. The four young people live in fear of the inevitable day when the city discovers their illegal presence in the house and evicts them. During the process, they struggle and perhaps thrive in spite of appearances.

Of the four squatters, the primary character is a 28 year old man named Miles Heller, a college dropout who had been working in south Florida removing property from repossessed homes. While in Florida, Miles became involved with a precocious 17 year old high school student, Pilar. Events force him to flee Florida, as he had fled his parents and college years earlier, and to accept the invitation of his old friend Bing to join him and two women in Sunset Park after Bing's girlfriend moved out. Bing runs a small repair shop called "The Hospital for Broken Things", but his primary interest in life is playing in a small jazz band.

There are two women squatters. Ellen struggles with selling real estate but her passion is art and painting. She turns from working on still lifes and buildings, where her work appears stilted, to the human body. Ellen is alone and sexually frustrated. The other woman in the house, Alice, is pursuing her PhD in English and working part town for an activist group concerned with the plight of dissident writers. Her dissertation topic is the 1946 film "The Best Years of our Lives" which deals with the problems of American servicemen returning home after WW II. The book is heavily freighted with symbolism -- with the film's suggesting something of the role that the period of squatting will play in the lives of the protagonists and the title of Bing's shop suggesting something of each of their lives.

There is also a great deal of baseball symbolism in this book using players both famous and obscure. The great promising pitcher for the Cleveland Indians, Herb Score, becomes emblematic of hard luck when his promising career ends as he is struck in the eye by a line drive. Auster also describes an obscure, undistinguished player, Jack "Lucky" Lohrke who faced three situations of almost certain death in WW II and lived to tell the tale. With baseball and bohemia the book is heavily atmospheric. It is at its best in the portrayal of the run-down neighborhoods of Brooklyn and of its struggling young people.

With all its symbolism and bohemian portraits, the book is short and a relatively fast read. It includes many characters besides the four young squatters. Most of this large group of secondary characters centers around Miles, and they include his father, who struggles to run a small publishing house, together with his stepmother, an academic, his mother, and actress, his stepbrother and his young girlfriend Pilar, the love of his life. The characters are well portrayed but the book is cluttered and has an almost dreamlike feel.

The book includes some highly poignant scenes and some beautifully lyrical writing. I was in love with much of the book and with its premise. As the book proceeds, the writing becomes overdone in places, with long, overly elaborate and mannered stringy sentences. There are also contrivances in the story line which make the book less effective. I liked the novel a great deal but was sorry my initial reaction was not fully sustained.

The novelist Siri Hustvedt, Auster's wife, suggested the phrase "the strangeness of being alive". When Ellen becomes deeply involved with the human figure the narrator of the tale observes: "She wants her human bodies to convey the miraculous strangeness of being alive -- no more than that, as much as all that. She doesn't concern herself with the idea of beauty. Beauty can take care of itself." The "strangeness of being alive", with all its enigmas, tragedy, coincidences and hope is the underlying theme of Paul Auster's novel.

Robin Friedman